


Afraid So

by onward_came_the_meteors



Series: October 2020 Prompts [16]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Mild Hurt/Comfort, One Shot, POV Third Person, Phobias, Post-Avengers (2012), Team Dynamics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-16
Updated: 2020-10-16
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:01:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27044668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onward_came_the_meteors/pseuds/onward_came_the_meteors
Summary: The Avengers are trapped within their own minds, forced to live out their fears.Yeah, it's definitely Steve's fault.
Relationships: Bruce Banner & Clint Barton & Steve Rogers & Natasha Romanov & Tony Stark & Thor
Series: October 2020 Prompts [16]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1947679
Comments: 4
Kudos: 31





	Afraid So

**Author's Note:**

> Day 16, for the prompt "hallucinations"

Tony was flying over a S.H.I.E.L.D. base—well, a Hydra base, but same difference—doing his level best to be a distraction so that the other five Avengers could try to break in.

He wasn’t half bad.

“JARVIS, how clear is the north tower? I want to do another loop.” Tony veered down to avoid fire from the window block and came up again over the top of the gates. Alarms were blaring as he shot by, and he had no doubt that the inside had been put on lockdown.

JARVIS’s voice echoed from the inside of the helmet. “The north tower has approximately twelve Hydra agents stationed, sir.”

“Nice even number.”

Tony soared up so that he was facing the ledge that ringed around the tower, where twelve dark shapes were indeed darting around and raising their weapons. There was a shout from one of them, and then he felt several dull  _ pings _ against the armor.

“ _ Hey _ .” Tony held up his hands in the classic surrender pose. “Come on. We can work it out.”

More bullets bounced off his chestplate, even as a couple of the Hydra agents turned to each other in confusion.

“Well, I wasn’t gonna shoot at you, but now you’re shooting at me, so—” Tony turned up his repulsors with a low whine and blasted the wall behind them, sending agents dropping their guns and scattering off the ledge. “There we go.”

He lifted off again, hovering up in the sky to survey the rest of the base from the top, when the coms staticked in his ear and Steve Rogers’s voice came out, sounding breathless as noises of a scuffle thunked from behind him.

“Status updates?” he asked.  _ Smack. Thud.  _ Then the  _ cling-cling-clang-cling _ that came whenever he was throwing the shield to bounce against a wall.

_ Showoff. _

“I’ve got the roof and main exits covered,” Tony said, switching onto coms. “It’s getting a little lonely out here so I’m assuming you guys got inside?”

“Past the front door,” Thor’s voice confirmed. “There is a stairwell over here that they seem  _ very _ determined to protect—yes, I’m talking about you; what, you think you aren’t being obvious?” There was the sound of something slamming against the floor and Thor sighed. “I have fought more evenly matched enemies.”

“Don’t get too cocky over there.” That was Natasha, speaking surprisingly calmly for someone who was obviously in the thick of the action. “There’s more agents down here—I count nine armed.”

“I’ll be there,” Thor promised.

Clint’s voice was so staticky when he finally spoke that Tony winced and leaned away from the speakers in his helmet. “Still at the gate. Six arrows left.” There was a pause and a  _ snap.  _ “Five arrows left.” The last word was so distorted that JARVIS had to provide a transcript at the bottom of Tony’s display.

“There shouldn’t be many more headed your way,” Steve said. “We’re trying to—” several grunts and something shattering “—trying to lead them over to Thor so he can, you know, lightning them up.” There was another pause. “What did you do to your coms, Barton?”

“Ah.” More static that garbled the beginning of the sentence. “—off the refrigerator and—” static “—raccoons. But I’m going to—” more static “—coupons at Radio Shack.”

“Never mind.”

Tony flipped himself over and flew down toward the other end of the building, where there were what looked like military-grade trucks trying to drive out onto the road. Whatever dental plan Hydra offered must not have been enough incentive to stay in a fight against all six Avengers. Speaking of which… 

“Anybody see the big guy lately? He’s not exactly easy to miss.” He swooped down in the center of the driveway, causing the truck in the lead to swerve out of the way.

He could  _ hear _ Natasha grinning through the coms. “Hang on. I’ll put him through.” There was a rustling sound as she must’ve been digging the device out of her ear, and a second later the sound of a familiar roar bellowed through his speakers.

“Tell him I said hi.”

There was more rustling as Natasha slipped the coms back in her ear. “He says to tell you ‘Hulk smash.’” Her voice was perfectly dry.

Steve started talking again, and Tony braced himself for the usual “ _ can we keep this business please, let’s keep the talking to a minimum, we’re all going to be as stalwart and grim as the troops in the Second War, _ ” but what he heard instead was, “Hey, guys? I think I found something.”

“Specifics, Cap. Did you find something like a flash-drive-with-all-their-information-stored-on-it-something, or like a giant-death-missile something?” Tony flew over the crashed trucks.

“It’s behind a locked door.”

There was a crash.

“It’s not behind a locked door anymore. I’m gonna check it out.”

“Use the buddy system,” Tony reminded him, but Steve ignored him. There was only the sound of breathing for a few seconds (on the coms, anyway; there were quite a lot of explosions on his end, but that was what happened when repulsor beams hit the gas tanks of large vehicles) before Steve spoke again.

“Yeah, this is big. No wonder they wanted so badly to keep us from finding it.”

“What is it?” Tony prompted.

“Not sure… it looks mechanical, but there’s one part here that’s glowing like a—”

There was a sharp intake of breath from another line of the coms, and Natasha burst out with “Steve, don’t touch that—”

And then everything went white.

* * *

When Tony woke up, the first thing he noticed was that he wasn’t in the suit anymore.

That in itself was more than a cause for concern, but then he slowly began to notice the rest of his surroundings.

He was lying on a smooth floor, and as he pushed himself up onto his arms, he could see that it was completely white, with only faint etchings of tiles to break it up. 

He stood.

He was in a room, or at least he assumed he was, even though this place didn’t have anything a room usually had, such as walls or a ceiling or windows or doors. Instead, there was just blank white emptiness, stretching as far as he could see in every direction with a slight fuzziness around the edges. Light was coming from  _ somewhere _ , but no matter where he looked, he couldn’t find the source.

Tony dropped his head to the ground. “Damn it, Rogers.”

Speaking out loud was surprisingly comforting, even if it was only to himself, and he took a few steps around in a circle.

Finally, something broke up the monotony of nothing-nothing-nothing-nothing; a figure was slumped over on the floor a few feet away, and closer inspection revealed it to be Clint Barton.

Out of everyone.

Tony walked over and looked down—Clint seemed to be awake, or in the process of waking up; groaning a little and rolling onto his side. “Are we dead?”

Clint frowned. “Hope not.” He stood up and stared around the room, but apparently couldn’t see any more than Tony had. “That would’ve been more anticlimactic than I thought.”

“Where’s everyone else?”

“Hell if I know.”

“You looking for something?” The voice came from behind them, and both Tony and Clint turned around to find Natasha half-stumbling toward them, stopping a few steps away.

“I don’t want to say this is reinforcing the hypothesis of us being dead—” Tony started, but Natasha interrupted.

“No, I don’t think that’s what happened.” She was frowning up at the inexplicably bright ceiling before her gaze turned to the floor and she stomped on it experimentally. 

“What, you’re an expert now?” Clint muttered under his breath.

Natasha ignored him. “This feels like… it feels familiar, doesn’t it?” She stomped the floor again as though expecting it to dissolve and held out a hand to where the opposite wall would be as though measuring something.

“Uh, no,” Tony said. “I think I’d remember.”

“Not exactly this, just… never mind.” Natasha shook her head.

“Guys?”

They should’ve heard footsteps, but sound was just another thing that was off in this wherever-the-hell-place they were. Steve, Thor, and Bruce (Bruce, not the Hulk, which was kind of disappointing because if there was anything that would be really useful in getting them out of here… but also kind of a relief because this place was devoid of smashable objects as basically its defining trait, and Tony didn’t really want to deal with a bored and frustrated Hulk in addition to all the other problems) walked over from wherever they’d woken up, all of them looking just as confused as Tony was.

When Thor got closer, Tony noticed something, or more specifically: the absence of something. His hammer wasn’t in his hand, nor was it hooked in that little loop around his belt.  _ And correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t the magical hammer have the ability to always come back to Point Break when he throws it? _

Thor must’ve caught him looking. “I know, I noticed that too.” He peered up at the lack of ceiling. “Something must have happened when the captain touched whatever was in the Hydra vault.”

Steve shifted. “... sorry.” He lifted his head apologetically. “It looked like alien tech.”

“Because  _ that’s  _ always a great plan,” Natasha murmured. 

“So what’ve we got?” Tony asked. He was met with shrugs and a couple blank stares. “Come on, guys. We’ve gotta have something to work with here.”

“Maybe if you had your suit,” Bruce pointed out. “Or Thor had his hammer. Or Steve had his shield, or Clint had his bow—”

“Yeah, I think we get the picture.” Tony pressed his fingers to his forehead. “We’re kinda screwed.”

Bruce shrugged, but there was something off about it, and that’s when Tony noticed that his teammate was shivering. Which would’ve been understandable enough, as the Hulk had only left him with the ragged shreds of what used to be pants, but they weren’t out in the elements, and it wasn’t all  _ that _ cold in here, was it—

Tony stopped. Now that he was paying attention… yeah, the room had definitely gotten colder. And fast—already he was shivering a little too, and the others—

He opened his mouth to say something, to ask if he was going crazy or everyone else was feeling it too, but no sound came out. Only a visible breath puffed out into the air.

_ What? _

Tony touched his throat and tried again, but still nothing. He couldn’t speak. It was like his vocal cords had frozen, and with the sudden temperature drop—that was still dropping, it was getting lower and lower every second, and he was shivering in earnest now—that might as well have been the case.

_ Hey. Hey, what’s going on. What’s happening, why is it so cold, why can’t I talk? _

The words formed on his lips, but came out as nothing more than gasps of breath.

Natasha and Clint had given up on trying to talk and were signing to each other rapidly—and yeah, Tony had picked up a little bit of ASL because he’d gotten annoyed at being left out of all the secret spy conversations, but he was nowhere near fluent enough to understand it at that speed—both of them shivering under their own suits. Bruce had wrapped his arms around himself in an attempt at some kind of warmth, but Thor had already folded his cape around the both of them, glancing back and forth at the others with a questioning eyebrow raise.

Tony tried to say “I’ll pass,” but again, the words just refused to be spoken. He resorted instead to a vague hand gesture that didn’t really mean anything at all, but seemed to convey the message well enough. At least he hoped it did, because his fingers were starting to go numb in the plunging temperature, and he didn’t really have the energy to do it any better.

He tucked his hands into his sleeves and blew on them a couple times. And it was  _ May,  _ for fuck’s sake.

_ Today’s really not our day. _

And then he noticed Steve.

Steve, the only one who wasn’t even trying to talk. Who was standing perfectly still, his hands clenched at his sides as the chill permeated the fabric of his suit. Whose eyes were pressed completely shut.

Tony stepped closer to his side.  _ Hey, you okay?  _ he mouthed, for lack of better options, but Steve wasn’t even looking at him.

He reached out to put a hand on his shoulder, but the moment he made contact, Steve’s eyes flew open and the temperature snapped back to normal. 

And going from  _ absolutely fucking freezing he was going numb and his fingers were going to fall off _ to “normal” was… well, it was a jolt.

“Whoa!” Tony blinked.  _ Wait.  _ He’d said that out loud. “Oh, hell yes.” 

From all around him, the rest of the team also apparently discovered the same thing, and for a moment nobody could get a word in edgewise while everybody tried to. Simultaneously.

“Okay, okay, calm down.” Natasha raised her hands. “Everyone can take a turn.”

Heat was flooding throughout the room again, and Tony felt himself shudder gratefully. Never before did he appreciate having an AI to control the temperature of his suit.

“What was—” Thor started, apparently not wanting to wait for a turn order, when Clint interrupted, pointing at something on the ceiling.

“What is  _ that? _ ”

Tony followed his gaze, as did everyone else, and actually felt the confusion slide over his face.

There it was, burning into where the ceiling should’ve been like it was made of fire: a huge, glowing, number six that vanished almost the moment it appeared.

“Well, that’s wonderful,” Natasha said.

Tony looked at her. “You know what it means?”

“I thought you were supposed to be the genius here, Stark.”

Tony had an equally sarcastic comeback ready, but it was at that moment that Thor chose to speak up.

“This is obvious, but… there  _ are _ six of us.”

“I don’t know if I like those implications, Blondie.”

Thor slid his cape back behind him. “Neither do I. But wherever we are, whatever this is, I do not think it was by accident that we ended up here.”

“That’s a relief,” Clint remarked. “I hate it when my mortal peril isn’t by intent.”

“I don’t think it’s trying to kill us.”

Everyone turned, with some surprise, to Bruce, who was untangling himself from the last end of Thor’s cape. He noticed their eyes on him and shrugged. “I mean, think about it; all that happened was that it got really cold, and not even to the point where our bodies would go into shock. And the fact that we couldn’t talk… if this is supposed to have an effect on us, I don’t think it’s physical.”

Tony caught on instantly, turning to his left. “So, Cap. How’re you feeling?”

Steve had been silent for a while, and Tony would almost have worried that whatever it was that had taken their voices away was still affecting him, but then he spoke, albeit in a softer tone than usual. “What do you mean?”

The ceiling was blank now, but Tony pointed at it anyway. “Something’s messing with our heads. And you’re the lucky one who got to go first.” Cold. Of course it had been the cold. Seventy years in the Arctic would do that to a guy.

Steve’s eyes widened, but he didn’t argue, which in itself was such a rarity that Tony almost second-guessed himself.

He didn’t have much time, though, before the floor dropped out from under them and they were all falling into empty space.

“Whoa!”

“Hey!”

“What the—?”

Tony didn’t say anything—he just shut his eyes and waited to hit the ground. After spending so much time in the suit, he knew what falling felt like, and he knew when it was unavoidable.

But minutes passed, and he still hadn’t hit the floor.

He was still falling.

And from the way the rest of the team’s initial surprised cries were tapering off to “huh?”s, so were they.

He opened his eyes and was greeted with the sight of everyone else falling just like he was—somehow, the white fuzz that was the ceiling kept getting smaller and smaller, but the floor (the vague area where a floor should be, anyway) didn’t get any closer. They might as well have been floating in midair, except that Tony could still  _ feel  _ the air rushing past him, his stomach jolting like he really was about to splat on the ground.

No immediate danger, then.  _ So is this one mine?  _ He hadn’t really told any of the team about his… well, about the psychological results of flying through a wormhole two years ago, but the concept of “falling” did tend to feature heavily in them. 

Two years ago, he would definitely have been having a panic attack at this, actually.

In fact, he hadn’t entirely ruled out the possibility when he spotted something else: Thor. More specifically, the way Thor was gritting his teeth as all of them continued to fall into the never-ending abyss, his hand reaching for his side as though expecting his hammer to be there.

_ Interesting to know for a guy who can fly. _

A voice filtered into his thoughts: Natasha, talking to Bruce. She, Clint, and Steve had all somehow arranged themselves as they fell into practiced positions—heads up, arms spread, legs bent—like it was instinct. Which it probably was, given how many times Tony had seen them jump from heights they really weren’t supposed to jump from.

“You should know how to fall,” Natasha was saying, as conversationally as though they were sitting around the kitchen table instead of free-falling through an empty void. “We get these situations a lot in the field—not this exact situation, but you know. It’s a good skill to have if you’re ever on the wrong side of a…” She shrugged. “Jet plane?”

Bruce actually seemed to think about it before shaking his head. “When I fall, it’s not me who has to worry about the landing.”

Clint glanced over. “Uh, we're not gonna have to worry about that here, are we?”

Bruce made a little waving gesture up and down with his hand.

“That’s not reassuring, Banner.”

“I don’t think any of us are going to have to worry about a landing,” Thor said suddenly. He very carefully didn’t look at any of them as he spoke, and the hand that would have normally held his hammer was now resting against the side of his belt.

“What makes you say that?” That was Steve, trying to make eye contact. Failing, but trying.

“Because we aren’t in a physical place.That’s obvious.” And yeah, maybe it was, with the nonexistent structure and the weird glowing numbers and the way temperatures and gravity and physics could bend at a moment’s notice, but that didn’t mean Tony wanted to hear any of them  _ say  _ it. Thor continued anyway. “We can fall and fall and never hit bottom, because there  _ isn’t  _ one.”

Thor didn’t look particularly happy about this fact. Tony could tell because his face was oddly illuminated.  _ Hang on a second… _

Tony lifted his head and yep, there it was: a brilliant bright number five burning down on them from the ceiling.

Almost the second it appeared, they weren’t falling anymore. They didn’t land, no—they just weren’t falling, standing back where they’d started on the floor of the blank white room. It was like their bodies had switched from moving vertically to horizontally without shifting their positions an inch. Which was  _ very  _ disconcerting and made Tony kind of dizzy.

“Oh, great,” he said just as the number five disappeared. “A countdown. Gotta love those.”

Steve cursed suddenly, and Tony was about to make a joke when he followed Steve’s gaze to just what it was he was cursing at, and changed his mind to “Shit.”

“What is—oh.” Bruce took a step closer to Thor. At almost the same moment, Clint and Natasha did the same, and Tony found himself almost at Steve’s shoulder.

The pointed spikes now thrusting their way up from the floor really didn’t leave them much choice.

The spikes were metal and shone with piercing razor-sharpness, making a long  _ shiiiiink _ sound as more and more of them shoved through the white floor, starting off small and narrow but quickly growing until they could easily puncture a hole through someone the size of the Hulk. As seconds passed, they began crisscrossing the room, blocking the Avengers in the tiny pocket they had managed to grab in the center, and even that was a situation precariously temporary.

“Come on!” Clint yelled at the ceiling as he had to jump to the side to avoid a spike thicker than his torso stab through the air and over to where the opposite wall would be. “Can we get a break? Can we get one break?”

Tony felt something brush against the back of his shirt and turned around on instinct, almost severing his spine as the something turned out to be another one of the spikes, barely a hairsbreadth away from his skin. He jumped forward, nearly landing on Thor’s feet. “Okay, some of you need to get therapy, because this is—” Another spike sliced over the top of his head and he ducked. “Whose is this anyway?”

“Don’t know, but—” Steve stumbled as one of them almost stabbed through his boot, but there were now so many that there was nowhere for him to fall except on the floor. “Tony, watch out—”

Tony looked up and dropped to the floor as well, seconds before another spike would’ve decapitated him. The rest of the team was down here too, now—standing up was too risky, and the spikes were closing in around them like walls. It wasn’t unlike being inside a giant thorn bush, except he really, really didn’t want to get pricked by one of these.

“ _ Move— _ ” That was Clint’s voice, somewhere in the back, and Bruce muttered something back that sounded like “ _ Little hard right now— _ ”

Steve had been right next to him, almost shoulder to shoulder, but now as the spikes closed in around them, he was forced to move behind. Tony couldn’t lift his head any higher—they were in a tight tunnel with sharp skewers for walls and ceiling and floor, barely enough room for the Avengers to hunch down in a single file line.

He couldn’t risk a glance over his shoulder to see who was behind him—he knew Steve was, and from the muffled bickering and cursing he figured at least two of the others were—but in front, Natasha was starting to crawl away, picking a path through the tunnel of spikes.

“Hopefully we don’t die like this,” Tony said under his breath, and followed after her, tiny sharp blades cutting into his knees and the palms of his hands as he went.

He felt Steve moving behind him as he caught up to Natasha—all any of them could do was crawl forward, and the spikes were so dense that Tony couldn’t even see where they were crawling to. He kept glimpsing things moving in his peripheral vision, but every time he turned his head—the tiny, tiny bit that he could actually turn his head without it getting sliced off—it only turned out to be more of the spikes, pushing in closer and closer around them. Blood was beginning to smear against his hands as more and more thin cuts appeared, and something was now running off his shoulder from where one of the spikes had clipped his ear.

Everyone’s talking dropped off one by one as all of their focus had to be given to trying not to get impaled—and then Natasha spoke.

“This one’s probably mine,” she said quietly. She was almost completely hidden from Tony’s sight now, even though her voice had only come from a few feet ahead.

Tony would’ve responded, but there were narrow spikes jabbing against his neck now, and one sliding against the top of his back and pressing him down lower, only he couldn’t  _ go  _ any lower because there were spikes from the ground too, and he couldn’t move anymore he was trapped and they were all trapped—

He moved his hand in a futile attempt to continue crawling forward, even though there was now no way he could fit himself another inch into this thicket, and braced himself to feel more of the inevitable stabbing pain.

He froze when his hand came down on empty air.

Suddenly, the spikes were gone, and he was pitching forward into blank white nothing.

_ This seems familiar. _

Tony was standing up again, and he lifted his hands in front of his face—because he was checking for cuts, obviously, not to make sure they were real, because that would just be ridiculous. There were none. His hands were perfectly smooth and whole, even though he had  _ felt  _ the spikes digging into his skin, he had felt it—

There was only emptiness around him. Just like it had been when he’d first woken up—empty, empty, empty, sweeping out into farther than his eyes could reach. And that should’ve been a relief, after being pressed in so tightly with the threat of imminent death looming over him and barely being able to move or see or breathe… but it wasn’t. He held his hand in front of him, waiting to feel a wall or  _ something  _ solid, and felt an inexplicable rush of panic when there was nothing.

“Alright, head count?” That was Clint’s voice, and Tony turned around to see the rest of the team standing in a circle. A couple of them looked like he did—glancing warily up at the sudden wide-open nothingness and edging a step closer to the others.

Thor was the one who pointed it out this time: the bright glowing four on the ceiling that sparked and sputtered before vanishing. None of them said anything about it. They really didn’t need to.

Bruce was shaking his head. “I’m glad that one’s over.” He looked quickly at Natasha. “Uh, no offense… ?”

Natasha was standing slightly apart with an indecipherable expression on her face, but at that her mouth quirked a little. “Trust me, you’re not alone.”

“Well, we’re halfway over,” Steve pointed out.  _ Damn it, Steve.  _ “What do you think happens when we get to zero?”

“Yeah, let’s not think about that.” Tony stuck his hands in his pockets.

“But who’s gonna be next—”

“Let’s also not think about that.”

There was a wary silence before Natasha suddenly tensed. “I hate to say this, but… does anyone else hear what I’m hearing?”

“Come on,” Clint sighed. “Five minutes. Come  _ on _ .” But he stopped talking, listening just like the rest of them.

Tony was still for a moment, not sure what he was listening for—and then there it was, the faintest noise in the distant, distant background, so quiet that he was surprised Natasha had heard it at all.

Once he did hear it, though, it was unmistakable.

The sound of gunshots tended to be.

Indistinct at first, they started to fire closer together, getting louder by the second. Tony glanced around at the rest of the team, only to find five faces also doing the same.

It was Thor who finally voiced what they were all thinking.

“This one could be any of you. Literally.”

Steve gave him a look, and Tony muttered, “ _ Hey _ ,” but Natasha just shrugged.

“Not me,” Clint pointed out easily. He tapped his hearing aids as though he were going to slide them out, but then changed his mind as Natasha raised her eyebrows.

They all listened to the gunshots as the  _ bangs _ grew louder and louder, the sounds of their echoes being cut off by the next round of fire.

“Do you think there’s real guns attached to these?” Tony asked. “Or d’you think it’s all just psychological messing-with-our-heads again?”

“Does it matter?” That was Natasha.

“I guess not.” Tony turned to his other side. “Hey, Bruce, do any of your PhDs cover this—”

He cut himself off as another round of gunfire cracked through the air and Bruce couldn’t stop himself from flinching. He’d never seen Bruce look this on edge even when they were on the helicarrier.

“Oh,” Tony finished, somewhat lamely.

“What?” Steve turned to Tony, following his gaze toward Bruce. “Oh.”

To be honest, every single one of them seemed pretty… well, unsettled. Not that he was surprised. Natasha and Clint were both darting their eyes around instinctively, as though trying to find an escape route even in this empty white nothingness, and even Steve and Thor (were either of them even bothered by bullets? He’d seen Steve get shot, yeah, but it always healed in like a day, and Thor might as well have been straight up invulnerable for all he knew—Tony could never get a straight answer out of him) were glancing from side to side as more gunshots shattered the air.

Oh, they were definitely getting closer now—he almost expected to see tanks rolling up to them—

Bruce’s chest was moving in and out, and Tony was on the verge of opening his mouth to say something, when the sounds abruptly stopped.

_ Huh. _

He waited a moment to make sure—Thor was narrowing his eyes, Clint was turning in a circle, and both Steve and Natasha had gone completely motionless—but there was nothing but dead silence.

Then an enormous flickering three appeared in the air, and Tony’s shoulders lowered in relief. Bruce’s eyes were absolutely huge in the light before the number disappeared like all the others.

The relief was short-lived, however.

“Are you guys feeling… weird at all?” Steve was frowning, and suddenly lurched to the side. At the same moment, Bruce almost tripped into Natasha and Thor leaned a little too forward to be natural.

“You had to say something.” That wasn’t exactly fair, since Tony’s arm had been going numb since before Steve had even opened his mouth, but he really did not like this feeling and there wasn’t anyone else to blame except the fuzzy white void around them—and that really wasn’t the best conversational opponent.

The numbness was spreading from his arm now, every part of his body starting to go heavy and useless. Tony dropped to his knees, and then onto his side as his muscles refused to hold him up. His cheek smacked against the floor and he couldn’t do more than strain his head upward.

“I think I liked the spikes better than this,” Thor remarked. From what Tony could see—which wasn’t a lot when his face was smushed against the ground—the thunder god was lying spread-eagled on his back and staring at the ceiling. Bruce was crumpled next to him, with Steve and Clint on his other side, and someone’s foot—Natasha’s?—was at the edge of Tony’s peripheral vision.

Tony struggled to move something, anything, but couldn’t manage to even wiggle a finger. His head could still bob up and down a little, but without the support from his neck, it really wasn’t worth it. “I might just agree with you there. This is a weird one.” He paused, following that train of thought to its logical conclusion. “Barton, seriously?”

He looked over at Clint to confirm it, and wasn’t disappointed.

“Screw you, Stark.” 

Next to Clint, Natasha’s head fell to the floor with a clunk. “Ow.”

“I really hope this one doesn’t last much longer,” Steve sighed. He had collapsed awkwardly on top of one of his arms, pinning it down underneath the rest of his body.

Everyone else, Tony included, made a kind of “mmph” sound in agreement.

Tony surveyed Clint as much as he could from his limited position. “I wonder if there’s a way to break him out of it quicker.”

“Don’t you dare,” Clint said immediately. He raised his head, but gave up and dropped it again after a few seconds.

“You don’t even know what I was gonna say—”

“I don’t need to, it’s a Tony Stark idea—”

“Guys—” Natasha interrupted, and in a rush of tingly adrenaline, all the feeling rushed back to his body.

Tony immediately jumped to his feet, everyone else doing the same. There were pins and needles in his arms and legs, but at least he could  _ move _ . Next to him, Steve was stretching his arms and Bruce was running his hands over each other experimentally.

“That feels good,” Clint decided. He was rocking back and forth on his feet as though testing them, reaching his arms back behind his head. “So, what, are we—”

He was cut off by a sudden loud  _ WHAM _ , and everyone was thrown backwards as though from the force of a bomb.

Tony ended up flat on his back a few feet away, and quickly scrambled to his feet. There was a familiar smell starting to simmer into the room, the faintest hint of smoke beginning to cloud the air. He barely noticed the large two shimmering on the ceiling before his ears were full of a crackling sound.

And then the room was full of fire.

It didn’t make sense, it didn’t follow the combustion triangle—there was no fuel, no chemical reaction, nothing that should have been able to burn—but there was no denying the bright flames that were now covering the floor, licking over it too fast for his eyes to even grasp, and he was suddenly glad he could move, because all he wanted to do was get away.

And get away he did, stumbling backward as fast as he could, but the room was filling with smoke, and pulling up his shirt didn’t help with the heat that was now searing over his skin, sucking the moisture out of the air and leaving everything burning.

He tried to take in a breath, but it stuck in his throat as smoke prickled through the air. He couldn’t breathe.  _ He couldn’t breathe. _

Someone was saying his name, but he couldn’t see anything but shadowy shapes in the bright heat of the fire.

“—Tony? Are you okay?”  _ Oh, that’s Bruce _ —and there he was, standing in front of him and peering into his eyes.

“Oh, yeah,” Tony managed to say, but that was it, because the heat was blistering over him and there was smoke in his lungs and the fire itself wasn’t the problem, oh no, he was in a workshop all day and there was at least forty percent of explosions for every successful new piece of tech… no, the problem was that it was  _ too hot _ ,  _ it was burning and there was so much smoke and he couldn’t breathe— _

“Tony!” That was Natasha, breaking off slightly to cough in the smoke, but then she was at his shoulder and forcing him to meet her eyes. “You have to focus, okay? It’ll be over soon like all of ours.”

Tony felt himself nod; he hadn’t done that on purpose. There was sweat rising over his skin that almost immediately went cold and  _ why was he shivering that made no sense— _

In the background, he could dimly make out the sounds of the others talking, and he latched onto it.

He heard Steve first; that was Steve’s voice; “Did anybody see if there was a number that time?”

“How were we supposed to see a number?” Thor asked, and if he’d had Mjolnir he would not doubt have been gesturing around with it. “Everything is on fire.”

“So no one was paying attention?”

“We’ve got some stuff on our minds, Cap,” Clint spoke up, sounding way too calm for the present situation.

“We’ve got some  _ us  _ in our minds,” Thor muttered under his breath.

He hadn’t realized Bruce was still standing next to him until his teammate moved, leaning over to the others. “Could you guys quit that? You’re not helping.” Bruce turned back to Tony, hesitating before putting a hand on his shoulder. “I’m serious, Tony, just… it’s gonna be fine, you’re gonna be okay.”

_ Well, this is a role reversal _ . The thought was so incongruous that he almost laughed; it startled Tony enough so that he managed to ask, “How did you guys get out of yours?” He didn’t specify what he meant, but from the look on their faces, they got it anyway.

Natasha was still watching him. “I told myself it wasn’t real.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“No, I didn’t.” Natasha paused. “You have to let yourself panic, but then you have to let yourself stop. If you can’t ignore the smoke or believe that it won’t really hurt you, just… “ She paused again, tilting her head, and Tony waited for the important revelation.

Instead, what Natasha ended up saying was “... make s’mores?”

Tony blinked. “ _ What? _ ”

All of a sudden, the fire vanished, and Tony was floating in empty space, an empty grayness filled with yellow lines zigzagging up and down like static on a screen. Everything seemed to spin for a long moment, and then he woke up lying on his back in the grass.

The sun was shining above them from behind grayish clouds, the tops of the few trees bending in the breeze. The Hydra base was still standing, although with a significantly higher amount of damage by lightning, repulsor blasts, a shield made of the strongest metal on earth, bullet holes, explosive arrows, and giant green fists. The enemy agents themselves were long gone, at least the ones who’d survived for enough time to get to a vehicle—probably at this moment wondering what had happened to make the Avengers suddenly stop fighting them mid-battle. At least none of them had spotted the six of them sprawled out on the grass.

Tony’s next discovery was almost as thrilling as finding out they were back in the real world—his suit was secured around him, the display in front of his eyes still blinking.

“JARVIS?” he muttered, and the AI immediately responded, a note of concern in his voice.

“Welcome back, sir. You were out for quite some time.”

“Yeah, about that… J, could I get the helmet open?”

“Of course.” The faceplate retracted, letting in a whoosh of fresh air.

Tony stood up, taking a deep breath—a breath that, yeah, still had the lingering traces of gunsmoke and floating debris dust, but was still better than whatever the  _ hell  _ that mind trip had been.

The others were waking up too, groaning and shifting as they pushed themselves up from the grass. Tony’s gaze immediately went to the hammer that had been lying in Thor’s grasp the entire time, the bow hooked over Clint’s back (and since Barton was also  _ lying _ on his back, that had to hurt), and the shield that had fallen next to Steve’s side.

Steve, predictably, was the first one to stand up, grabbing his shield and scanning the area before determining, like Tony, that the base was definitely deserted. “Well, that’s one way to get a mission accomplished.”

“I don’t think I like this way,” Bruce muttered, brushing himself off as he also stood.

Tony spotted Natasha a little to his left, and took a step closer, the pieces of his suit whirring. “What was that?”

Natasha shrugged, and—oh, was that a smile? That was definitely a smile.  _ Shit.  _ “I had to knock you off your rhythm, didn’t I?”

“So that whole thing was—” Tony stopped and regarded her with a look. “You’re a tricky one, you know that.”

Clint laughed as he slung his quiver off his back to inspect it. “Be glad that’s all she did; I’ve seen her in action.”

“I know what you mean,” Steve muttered. Bruce got an interesting expression on his face, but he didn’t have time to say anything before Thor spoke.

“Not to bring the mood down or anything,” he started, which almost definitely meant that he was about to bring the mood down. “But did that experience remind anyone of a certain scepter?”

Clint paused. “Fuck.”

“Hydra with space weapons.” Steve shook his head. “Why does that sound familiar.”

Bruce glanced back and forth from Steve to Thor, and then to the others. “Wait, what? How would Hydra have the scepter?”

Tony winced. “Right, you missed that part. Uh, remember New York? We kinda handed it over to Pierce and his guys—his Hydra guys that we thought were S.H.I.E.L.D. guys—after you smashed Loki up.”

Bruce rubbed his forehead. “Of course you did.”

“Hey, we didn’t  _ know _ they were Hydra at the time,” Tony protested. “I personally would’ve been fine with keeping it a little longer, but it was a long day and I was feeling accommodating.”

Steve slid his shield onto his arm. “Important thing is we know not to do that again.” There was the slightest trace of sarcasm in his voice.

“The important thing is that now we have to find it,” Thor said. “Hydra running around with Loki’s scepter… would be bad.”

“Not gonna argue with you there.” Tony glanced around at the others. “Anybody know where to start?”

Natasha looked thoughtfully back at the ruined base. “I might have some ideas.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


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